


Gollum’s Redemption

by Maker_of_Rune_Vests



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crossover, Gen, tw suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:09:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18683854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maker_of_Rune_Vests/pseuds/Maker_of_Rune_Vests
Summary: A crossover fan fiction in which Gollum from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings comes to Narnia through a passage between his cave and the dragon’s cave in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.





	Gollum’s Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> This was my final paper for my class about the Inklings.

Through a hole between caves fell a creature who ought to have been more like a Hobbit than he was. It was a small, stony hole, that skinned his elbows and knees and dropped him onto the back of an invisible dragon named Eustace Clarence Scrubb. (The dragon was named Eustace Clarence Scrubb because he normally was a boy with human parents who had appalling taste, was invisible because he was wearing the One Ring, and was a dragon because he was greedy). Gollum slid down the dragon’s invisible, scaly ribs and crouched, eyes scanning the cave, mind guessing how big this creature might be and where it might have the Ring. 

He ran his coldly sweating hands over one scaly foot of the dragon, and then over another. The dragon wiggled, and Gollum’s hands and mouthing lips froze for a moment. But he did not run. He slunk towards the dragon’s forelegs and ran his fingers down scales until he found a foot, and then talons—and on the second talon he touched the Ring. His mouth opened in a silent, almost toothless scream of anxious gladness, and he tried to smoothly pull the Ring off.

It was stuck. It was extremely stuck. Panic spread over his face. It could not come off! But it must have gone on! He tugged with a grunt and almost fell, and the dragon stirred again and made a startled sound. Nine-toothed, Gollum champed down right above the Ring.

Dragon scales are tougher than Goblin skin. They are even tougher than Goblin toe-claws. Regardless, dragons object to being chewed upon. Eustace Clarence Scrubb the dragon gave a yelping roar and careened out of the cave, sending Gollum flying. All went black.

Gollum woke to the most horrendous sound he had ever heard, though he had heard death rattles and torture screams often. This sound was less despairing, but there was more of it. Much more of it. It was as large as the broad shadow that Gollum saw when he crept outside, the shadow that blocked moonlight from half of the pool that gleamed near the cave. This shadow broadened suddenly, and Gollum ran forward and, just as the dragon was lifting off, saw a line dented into the grass by its dragging tail. Gollum leapt and clutched the tail, and though it slashed back and forth, and though soon pine pinnacles scratched his bare feet, he did not fall. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought about his Precious.

Because his eyes were shut, he did not realize that the dragon was landing in the sea until he plunged through seafoam into cold water. Gollum’s eyes flew open and he began to swim, but the dragon’s heavy tail pinned him down into saturated sand. The water was not deep, not deep at all, but it went into his nose and pressured his ears, and there was not air—

_ Déagol. Airless _ .  _ Gollum killed _ —

“What in Aslan’s name is  _ that _ ?!” someone yelped as Caspian reached into the water and pulled Gollum out from under the dragon’s tail. 

Gollum wriggled like a demented frog. “Are you hurt?” Caspian asked him. 

“Not hurt, no, not hurt, gollum.”  Blood was running down his face from when the dragon had swatted him. “It must slice our Precious off the dragon and give it to us, yes, give it to us!”

“He’s a dragon?” This speaker’s voice was soft and high-pitched. “He made marks on the sand that say he’s Eustace, but we can’t tell what he  _ is _ .” 

Gollum forgot to beg Caspian for the Ring as Caspian set him down on the sand, facing Lucy Pevensie. He pressed his palm against the wound on his head and stared up at her. She looked as if she wanted to help him. “It stole it, and hides from our eyeses,” he whined.  

Murmurs were arising of “Invisible dragon?” 

“You’re hurt!” Lucy bent and tried to see the wound on his head. “And you need clothes—Ed, I’m going to take him to the ship.”

Another young man nodded. “I’ll stay with him.” He gestured to where the dragon was.  

Fear trembled from Gollum’s wet feet through his foodless stomach and into his tense shoulders. He couldn’t walk away from his Precious. He couldn’t. “Give us our Precious?” he coaxed, tugging on Lucy’s sleeve. “It’s stuck, stuck on the dragon’s nasty big claw, yes, stuck fast and poor Gollum cannot gnaw it off, gollum.” 

Lucy looked as if she wanted to pull her sleeve away, but then she smiled at him.“Eustace won’t go anywhere, and if it’s stuck on his claw, it will have to stay with him,” she pointed out.“Come on, do. I have medicine that will fix your poor head.” Gollum found himself walking towards a colorful ship with his back towards his Precious, and was wordless. 

He dripped on the floor of Lucy’s cabin while she found a small bottle. “Hold still.” Very gravely, she applied one drop from it onto his wound. Gollum had forgotten that noses did not only perceive foulness or nothing. He was so dazed by the fragrance that he almost did not notice the pain dissipating, and, indeed, was not expecting to find himself alone with clothes he was supposed to don.

Thus began Gollum’s time in the company of Narnians. He wore a backwards shirt, but no pants. He spat on the decks and ate fish raw. He insinuated that Reepicheep was crunchable. And always, always, and always, he stalked the dragon, craving the invisible Ringjammed onto its claw.

It was because he stalked the dragon that he began to listen to Reepicheep’s stories, a small squatting shadow beside an invisible dragon, staring at the mouse as he gesticulated and remembered and lightly embellished. The stories were alien to Gollum; they were tremendously full of loyalty and love, hugs and handclasps, mending and amending. 

One night, overcast and windy, not long after Gollum had begun to think more about Reepicheep’s stories while the mouse was telling them than about the Ring, Reepicheep told a story with a macabre beginning.“The twin brothers slept in the same room, learned the same lessons, and aspired to the same glorious deeds. But—” The mouse paused, one paw half raised, his eyes bright in his midnight fur. “One day, the younger twin leapt upon a diamond-embellished dagger from a battlefield for which the elder twin yearned. The elder twin bawled “You stole it!” and gripped his brother by the throat. He—”

Gollum ran so far that he could no longer hear Reepicheep narrating.  _ The wind, and the wind, and the sounds of Déagol choking.  _ Gollum pressed his hands over his ears. “No, no, no,” he whispered. “No, no, no, no, no.” Perhaps the Ring had not been worth killing his friend. Particularly not while it was irremovably on an invisible dragon. “We had to, we had to, gollum, gollum,” he gulped. “He stole it.” He whispered himself to sleep, a curled shadow under a bush leafless from dragon breath. 

When he woke, he saw two beings silhouetted against dawn light. The one was a boy he had not seen before, and the other was a creature of which he did not know the name. It was shaped like a cat and was larger than a warg, but it was utterly distinct from both. It made Gollum remember words he had not used for centuries, such as “majestic” and “noble.” Gollum wriggled back, until he was sure the bush was veiling him.

Gollum did not notice the boy leave, but he saw the golden being turn and walk towards the burned bush. “You are far from home, Sméagol,” Aslan stated, and Gollum cringed. He was certain that this being knew of his pining for the Ring and of how Déagol had writhed. “What do you seek?”

“I wants my Precious,” Gollum whispered, and gulped. He saw Aslan begin to shake his head, and squeezed his eyes shut so hard that when he opened them, everything was blurry. Aslan was no longer visible. 

When Gollum returned to the camp, everyone seemed to be merry, and he heard bits of conversation: “No more dragon.” “We can leave.” “He’s visible and a lad again.” He began to piece together what had come to pass, and his heart began to leap and to plummet. The Ring was clearly no longer stuck on the dragon, if the dragon was now a lad, but where was it?

Gollum saw the Ring, hanging around Reepicheep’s neck as the mouse carried a folded tent that was larger than its carrier onto the ship. He raced after Reepicheep and climbed up the Dawn Treader’s side, dropping in front of the mouse. Without thought of stories or of memories, he snatched for the ring. Reepicheep dropped the tent between them. “I have been given this in trust.”

“It’s ours!” Gollum screamed. “My Precious!” 

Reepicheep shook his head. “No, my friend. Aslan has decreed that I shall bear it to his country, for it is a peril to Narnia.” He lightly touched the hilt of his sword. “I cannot return it to you.”

Gollum considered the situation and decided that he would have to steal the Ring, rather than snatch it. “Poor Gollum,” he complained, backing away. “Why did Aslan give it our present?” 

Reepicheep shook his head. “It is for your good as well as that of Narnia. I know already that it is execrable, but by Aslan’s grace I shall bear it to His country.” He bent and lifted the tent and walked away with it, leaving Gollum staring after him. 

The Dawn Treader set sail, bringing Gollum because Caspian and the other Narnians were too humane to abandon him on an uninhabited island. He was aboundingly seasick until Lucy gave him more of her cordial, but after that simply existed, clambering around where nobody was meant to clamber. He gave sailors chills and occasionally got on Edmund and Eustace’s nerves. He spent much time with Reepicheep, who gladly told him more tales and who was ever kind to him, but who began to place a paw over the Ring whenever Gollum came within staring distance. Gollum hissed in his heart and waited. He could not discover where the mouse slept. But there were times when he liked the idea of failing to steal the Ring until after at least one more day of sun and night of stories. 

One night he was creeping about the deck, desultorily seeking Reepicheep and now and then looking up at the stars, and saw him standing near the deck rail, staring east. Soundless, Gollum crept up behind him and grabbed the Ring’s chain. 

The flat of Reepicheep’s rapier painfully switched into Gollum’s arm, and he squeaked and leapt backwards, but as he moved he flipped the chain up over Reepicheep’s head and crushed the Ring and its chain together in his palm. He stood there, fingers tight around the metal. The Ring felt warmer than it had, but otherwise the same. His Precious. 

“Aslan wills that I take it to his country.” Reepicheep’s voice was lethally serious. “Return it, or I must do battle to regain it.” He had assumed a fencing stance.

Gollum sprang towards the rail. They had said an island lay so close that they expected to dock there before the sun rose. Reepicheep dropped his rapier and flung himself after him, grabbing his ankles. He was smaller than Gollum, and weaker, but he was a warrior, not merely a murderer and a hunter. In a blur, he drove a hard paw into the small of Gollum’s back, wrenched back the arm that clutched the Ring, and pried it out of Gollum’s fingers. Gollum spun around, hissing so furiously that it was almost a scream, to see Reepicheep wearing the Ring again and holding his rapier out towards him. Reepicheep’s mouth opened. “Go to bed.” 

Gollum hunched and turned and slunk away, but stopped slinking in the darkness near the ladder to below the deck. He knew that he was so silent that Reepicheep would not notice that he had not descended the ladder. In the shadow, he lurked, seeing two futures. One commenced with descending the stairs, and continued on without the Ring but with stories and friendship, with light and lovely scents. And he would ask someone who the golden being had been, and someone would tell him. The other future commenced with his hands around Reepicheep’s furry throat, and it had the Ring. Gollum bit his knuckle, and chose.

As Reepicheep walked towards the stairs, Gollum attacked him, gripping his throat and squeezing as he struggled less and less. It was easier than strangling Déagol had been; Déagol had been Gollum’s own size…. When Reepicheep went limp, Gollum let go. He snapped the chain, which was wet. No, his hands were wet. He realized then that he had been crying, and—he looked away from the Ring, at Reepicheep, and for half a second saw Déagol’s empurpled face. He dropped the Ring and stood, tense with horror, and then the face became Reepicheep’s again as the mouse, not at all dead, sprang up on all four paws and neatly scooped up the Ring and stared up at Gollum with genuine betrayal.

Gollum cringed. “We needs it,” he whispered, and ran towards the deck rail and jumped over it, breath unheld. Death had made Déagol not need the Ring. It would make Sméagol not need the Ring. But he only breathed in water once before a small paw grabbed his ear and pulled his nose above water, and Reepicheep admonished, “I”—a coughing fit— “sent you to bed.”

The water was gelid. Gollum and Reepicheep spent the next ten minutes shouting, not an easy task for a recently strangled mouse and a whisperer, and then sailors and Edmund and Caspian appeared and fished them out, and asked why they were overboard. Reepicheep shook his head. 

Reepicheep was sitting on a porthole ledge near Gollum’s bed when Gollum awoke. “I have not told them of your treachery because I have borne this ring, and even after so few days, it is by Aslan’s good will alone that I have not stolen it,” the mouse said gravely, as Gollum cringed and rubbed his eyes. Reepicheep sprang down from the ledge. “I offer you forgiveness; will you provide it an apology to nest in?”

“Forgive me?” Gollum whispered, and then found himself wailing out the entire story of how he had strangled Déagol and that it “not a present, not a present, no, poor Déagol. Not mine. Precious but not mine, not Sméagol’s.” He looked at Reepicheep at the end, only to see Reepicheep kneeling. He looked the other way, and saw Aslan.

“You have done well, Reepicheep,” the Lion said. Reepicheep bowed still more deeply, and Aslan looked at Sméagol. “You have done great wrong, both here and far away.”

“Yes,” Sméagol admitted, staring back at the Lion. “I should die.”

The Lion shook his head. “That is not your choice. Your choice is to let the Ring pass into my country, or to let its evils corrupt this world.” 

“I will let it pass,” Sméagol heard himself say.

The Lion ceased to be there.

Silence. The Ring was on Reepicheep’s chest, and Sméagol accepted that it would remain there and then would pass into the utter East, as a rhyme Reepicheep had recited a few times called it. 

“The knight of whom I spoke, the murderer,” Reepicheep said. “The tale from which you fled. He repented of his deed, and the tale chiefly concerns his quests in defense of pariahs.” He climbed three rungs up the ladder to the upper deck, and looked back at Sméagol. “Are you coming?” 

**Author's Note:**

> Works Consulted  
> Chang, Natalie. “This is Solitary.” The Atlantic,  
> www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/spike/this-is-solitary/1245/. Accessed 23 Apr. 2019.
> 
> Christie, E. J. “Sméagol and Déagol: Secrecy, History, and Ethical Subjectivity in Tolkien's  
> World.” Mythlore: A Journal of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature (MythloreJ), vol. 31, no. 3-4, 2013, pp. 83-101. 
> 
> Jeffreys, Derek S. “Cruel but Not Unusual.” Commonweal, vol. 141, no. 11, 2014, pp. 20-23.
> 
> Lewis, C.S. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. HarperTrophy, 1994. 
> 
> Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. Mariner Books, 2012. 
> 
> \---. The Return of the King. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992.
> 
> \---. The Two Towers. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992.
> 
> Understanding the Opioid Epidemic. Directed by John Grant, PBS, 2018. 
> 
> Watson, George. “The High Road to Narnia: C. S. Lewis and His Friend J. R. R. Tolkien 
> 
> Believed That Truths Are Universal and That Stories Reveal Them.” American Scholar (ASch), vol. 78, no. 1, 2009, pp. 89-95.


End file.
